Elongated hollow stuffing tubes are an integral part of all modern sausage encasing machines. They serve as the conduit upon which a hollow elongated casing material is mounted and through which meat emulsion is pumped for delivery into the casing.
These stuffing tubes are conventionally mounted on a solid elongated cylindrical stuffing tube end. The rearward end of the tube is slidably inserted over a protruding cylindrical portion of the stuffing tube end. The two components are then rigidly secured together by a stuffing tube pin, or a collar.
The principal shortcoming of the foregoing structure is that the stuffing tube has a meat intake port or opening that must be aligned with an outlet port of a meat emulsion pump. If the stuffing tube is not carefully placed in position on the stuffing tube end, misalignment of the outlet port of the pump and the inlet port of the tube will result. In such case, the tube must be disassembled from the stuffing tube end, then realigned, and then reassembled.
It is therefore a principal object of this invention to provide a mounting assembly for stuffing tubes on sausage encasing machines wherein the stuffing tube can only be secured to the stuffing tube end in a position that its meat inlet port will be oriented to align with the meat outlet port of the pump.
This and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.